Feinberg may roll into car czar spot

Kenneth Feinberg, a Democratic lawyer who’s mediated some of the country’s toughest disputes, reportedly is a top candidate to oversee the $15 billion auto industry rescue fund.

If appointed “car czar,” Feinberg would write guidelines for a restructuring of General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler. And if Detroit’s Big Three ultimately fail to fulfill congressional requirements for receiving the funds, Feinberg could take them back, according to The Associated Press.

Story Continued Below

Feinberg is known for his arbitration of complex compensation disputes. As special master of the Sept. 11 Victims Compensation Fund, he was responsible for doling out $7 billion in government funds to 5,300 families of those killed or injured in the terrorist attacks. Feinberg managed the fund pro-bono for 33 months, personally presiding over 900 hearings.

“Frankly, after what he went through, this is an easy assignment,” said Leo Boyle, the former president of the American Association for Justice, which provided free legal council to roughly 2,000 families that filed claims with the fund. “This one’s just about loans. The other one was about a country’s soul having been crushed.”

The 63-year-old corporate lawyer has made a career out of mediating highly-sensitive conflicts, including cases allocating damages to Holocaust survivors, families of students killed in the Virginia Tech shootings, and asbestos and Agent Orange victims.

He has not been offered the car czar position and could not comment on whether he’d accept the post, said Camille Biros, business manager of The Feinberg Group,

Feinberg began his Washington career on Capitol Hill, where he worked as a special counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee before becoming chief of staff for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) He left for private practice at the law firm Kaye Scholer in 1980, where he quickly built a reputation for handling the most difficult cases.

In 2001, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft appointed Feinberg to head up the 9/11 fund, which was established by the federal government as part of an airline bailout package to compensate victims’ families for lost earnings, pain, and other monetary damages. Families that participated agreed to waive their right to sue the airlines and other potentially liable parties.

At first, the families criticized the fund as a congressional ploy to protect companies from lawsuits with what they saw as insultingly low payments. But as the awards were distributed, Feinberg slowly won support for his adept and sensitive management.

“He was stuck between the actuaries on Capitol Hill and the advocates that were fighting for the families,” said Boyle. “He was able to walk that fine line and bring the program to an efficient speedy conclusion, in a way that respected each individual life.”

In the end, 97 percent of the eligible 2,973 families filed death claims and another 2,680 filed injury claims. The payments for victims averaged almost $2.1 million per family.

The experience, Feinberg said afterwards, changed his life. He downsized his firm from 30 to seven employees and started teaching more at law schools across the country. He’s currently an adjunct professor at the UCLA School of Law.

“You can’t help but realize there’s a lot of uncertainty in life and that you’re calculating awards for individuals who were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Feinberg told the Washingtonian in March. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in the World Trade Center in a city with 10 million people or the town of Blacksburg. You cannot immunize yourself from tragedy.”